I was once in a conversation with a man who tried to convince me that the word ‘Woman’ comes from ‘Womb-Man.’ He had heard about it from a famous preacher, and he really, really believed that this preacher was right. Womb-man, he said, is a man with a womb. He even said it was biblical, from the time Adam said, “She shall be called Woman…” (Genesis 2:23).

My response at the time was, “Oh, Okay”. Because sometimes people are so passionate about their beliefs, and you want to argue, but you know they will not listen. So you choose the peaceful, perhaps cowardly way out, and you go with, “Oh, okay.”

Sooo. Woman. Womb-man. A man with a womb. A definition based mostly, if not totally, on the ‘Woo’ sound. And what about those languages where  the word woman does not evoke the womb? Chichewa: Mkazi. Tumbuka: Mwanakazi. French: Femme. Hebrew: Isha (which Adam was referring to by stating that she was taken out of the man’s side. Nothing to do with the womb).

Right. Let’s take a break from the similarity in pronunciation, the phonetics, if you will. Apart from the womb-man issue, there is, quite often, a serious association of a woman with a womb, or rather, the fruit of the womb. An association which does not take into account the fertility problems that women sometimes face, or the health issues that might be associated with the womb, or the woman with no desire to use her womb and what of the woman without a womb?

In many cultures, women have been defined by that womb, and sometimes with serious consequences. I remember, as an adolescent, reading several stories in the newspaper about women who had pretended to be pregnant, gone to the hospital and met young women who had just delivered.  The narrative would be something like this,

“Oh, what a beautiful baby. I’m also due as you can see.”

Young mother: “Thank you.”

Woman pretending to be pregnant, “May I hold her for a bit?”

Young mother hands over baby.

Woman pretending to be pregnant holds the baby tenderly, rocks her. And then: “Oh look, the nurse is calling young mums to go and get some medication. You go, I’ll hold our lovely princess.”

Young woman goes off. And when she comes back, the other woman is gone. And so is the baby.

In the cases that I heard or read about, the baby thief was caught, sometimes just a few days after arriving back home. Some of the reasons included the fact that there was always that suspicious relative who would say, “Wait a minute, I haven’t seen you nurse the child even once. “ or: “I don’t think you were really pregnant. The slope of that tummy…”

Decades later, I was curious about whether such stories still occur. And this is what I found in the news headlines:

Woman Arrested for Stealing a Baby (Zodiak Online, 29 August 2023)

Woman Arrested for Stealing 5-month-old baby at Zomba Central Hospital  (Face of Malawi, 25 October 2023)

Woman Jailed Three Years for Stealing Baby in Zomba (Malawi 24, 18 November 2023)

There are more stories like the ones above. In some cases, no reason is given for the abduction, but in others, the reason is desperation for a child.

Nothing justifies abduction. It brings about trauma, for the mother and the child. The mother who has undergone this will probably treat everyone who wants to admire her child with suspicion, thinking that they are probably going to steal her child from her again.

Desperation for a child is real. It shouldn’t, and doesn’t always, lead to abduction, but think of how real it is by taking a look at our folktales. Kamdothi, the Child of Clay, was moulded by a woman who could not have a child. She moulded a beautiful child and tried, in vain, to protect her from the rain. Desperation and motherhood.

Then there’s the story of a polite, helpful girl. She helped a very old woman and even ate worms because the woman had shared supper with her. The old woman was so moved that she told the girl to go into a certain room, open a certain calabash, and there was the most beautiful baby ever! Motherhood as a reward.

Motherhood is there, in our stories. In our songs. We celebrate it. I have met women who will receive many gifts for Mother’s Day, but who will still go, “Where is my Mother’s Day chitenje?”

But there are so many ways of being a mother. I remember raising a little girl from the time she was four months old. She was my cousin’s daughter, and my cousin was a young teenager, still at secondary school at the time. It was funny raising that girl, and it was fun. I remember rushing to the hospital with her, and the doctor telling us there was nothing wrong, really. I remember her throwing her first tantrum, and me trying to figure out how to deal with such fits. I remember my mum visiting and thinking some of the motherhood skills she witnessed in my house were rather unconventional but hey, those skills worked.

I also think that our African communities, no matter how diverse, knew the different forms that motherhood could take. That is why, in many African countries, you don’t really have a word for ‘aunt’. You have Mother, Younger Mother, Older Mother. Or, to use the more literal forms; Amai (Mother), Amai aakulu (literally big or older), and Amai aang’ono (literally small or younger mother).

I know of women who have raised children. These may be stepchildren. They may not even have been part of the child’s past, but oh, the bonds they have gone on to develop. I recently lost a friend, and at her eulogy, they talked about how she was survived by two children. And her stepchild stood and delivered a speech. He said, “It has been said here that she had two children. But I want you to know she was our mother too. She inspired us to go to school. She taught us to pray,”. It was so moving, and it was food for thought.

The same, incidentally, can be said for fathers. A certain man once told us at a gathering, “I have a father and I have a dad. The man who raised me, that’s my dad.” And he said it with such emotion that those of us who were there did not ask further questions. We understood.

Sometimes it is not even stepchildren. You meet youngsters, you end up having this amazing bond. Maybe there are skills you can share with them. Maybe they get your jokes. Maybe you get theirs. I call them son-friends and daughter-friends.

At a time when street-children are getting a bad name, I still know of someone who has raised many of them, took them off the streets and even managed to ensure a good education for them. She is young, and when she speaks about the children, it is not about ‘them’. The phrase she uses is ‘my children.’

Motherhood. For some it happens because they have given birth, biologically. For others, even if they haven’t given birth, they are still mothers in so many ways; trough adoption, mentorship, through the bonds that are formed through the years. And they, too, deserve their Mother’s Day chitenje.

I have said a lot about motherhood and its different forms. But I would be making the same mistake as my friend at the beginning of this essay if I didn’t talk about how womanhood is not necessarily synonymous with the maternal instinct.

Three years ago, when I was talking about motherhood in literature during a book launch, I referred to the archetype of the ‘devouring mother.’ Why oh why did I bring this up? A young woman actually thought I meant this literally,  and asked me in a very offended tone, “Do you mean to say mothers eat their children?”

I explained, very patiently (I think), that no, that was not what I meant. The devouring mother is one that prevents her children from becoming independent. She stifles them because she enjoys the fact that they are dependent on her. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung even stated that the devouring mother could even be driven to violence over her need to exert control over others. So no, the devouring mother will not have her children as a starter, main meal or dessert, but she will definitely make sure that her interests are served (pun intended).

Remember how I told you about women who would steal children out of societal pressure? Here is the other side of the story; women who dump children. I’ll start with Aubrey Kalitera’s novel,  Mother Why Mother (1983). It tells the story of a young woman who is so determined to marry a white man that she dumps her baby from a previous relationship. I will not ruin the rest of the story for you, but instead, let’s take a bit of time (again) to see what some of the news headlines have said about the grim realities of baby dumping:

Malawian Woman arrested for dumping baby in toilet (The Maravi Post, June 11, 2015).

Woman dumps baby in a pit latrine: Malawi Police Arrest her (Nyasa Times, January 30, 2018).

Woman arrested for dumping a newborn baby (MIJ News, October 26, 2022).

Woman dumps newly born baby at Salima District Hospital ( Face of Malawi, 16 November 2023).

The depressing stories are endless. Different reasons are given for baby dumping. Some are economic, others are sociological. Whatever the reason, no baby deserves to be dumped. What all this points to is how one simply cannot generalise and assume that a woman is a nurturing mother simply because she is a woman.

There are also women who have not had to resort to such extreme measures. They have made a choice not to have children, and have found fulfilment in other areas, because this is a rich, vast world, with challenges and opportunities. The choices they have made do not make diminish their womanhood.

What is the point of all these reflections? It is simply that there are different ways of being a Malawian woman. Not all of those ways have been covered here. To the mother who has many biological children, you are a woman. To the woman who has one child, you are a woman. To the woman who has infertility issues, you are a woman. To the woman who has had a hysterectomy, you are a woman. To the woman who has chosen not to have a child, you are a woman. Notice that I am not saying, “You are still a woman.” No, the ‘still’ is not needed. You are a woman.

Let me wrap up by quoting Sojourner Truth (1851), who gives us some examples of the ways in which women are women, ways which society might find unconventional, but which do not change the facts. It is a speech that has been presented in various forms over the years. It has had different rewritings, but, given the aspects we have covered above, I have chosen the version which repeats the rhetorical question ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ by way of emphasizing different experiences:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?